Tomb

Full disclosure: I enjoy GQ or Esquire as much — perhaps more — than your average red-blooded male. Foppish fashion? Community’s Alison Brie in compromising positions? Luxury axes for the urban woodsman? Sign me up — this is fun stuff!

But upon exiting the Daily Globe on 17th Avenue last week, I run into an acquaintance. We riff-raff, until she notices my copy of the Zach Galifianakis-branded GQ tucked under my arm.

“Oh,” she says, pausing to choose her words. “I didn’t think you read things that were that… um, douchey.”

Welp. Douchey? That’s a term usually reserved for, say, Mystery, or his fuzzy top-hat totin’ brand of pickup artists. Or, perhaps, Guy Fieri, a man who takes fashion cues from Chester the Cheetah. (Whose name, incidentally, turns up when you Google “douchebag chef.”) Or Bam Margera and his why?-liner. Or Vin Diesel in XXX.

But me? My choice of reading material, which, beyond the booze and babes, has a feature well displaying a roster of top-shelf writers unveiling their life’s work, all funded by Conde Nast’s deep pockets, is... douchey?

She was onto something, though. At least that’s what I realized when Man Up! 367 Skills for the Modern Guy, a handguide to masculinity written by Newsweek and Wired scribe Paul O’Donnell, landed on my desk.

Up front, this is the kind of stuff I should like. There’s pithy writing. Morsels of ADD information, suitable for a quick rendezvous with your toilet. Heck, there’s even an interview with 30 Rock’s dork savant, Judah Friedlander. And this is all about M.A.N., that hairy, testosto-tribe I’m supposed to identify with.

But as I crack its first chapter — hideously titled “Brand: You” — I get that awful, tingling feeling at the base of my spine. I think that’s what they call the douche chill.

One of the irrefutable truths of feminist philosopher Judith Butler is that gender — heck, everyday living — is all about performance. And O’Donnell should get that — after all, this guide isn’t about being a man, but it’s about playing one on TV. With helpful shaving tips!

Here’s where it gets dicey, though. While this isn’t completely archaic (see, Tip 62: How to tell your friends you’re gay, or tip 46: How to socialize with a recovering addict), and there are plenty of people who could use this brand of, ahem, social assistance, this feels like a ’50s etiquette guide — not a map to modern existential minefields.

There’s a reason those etiquette guides populate garage sales and Tumblogs — it’s because they’re quaint in their incorrectness. Deep down, most everyone understands that masculinity, femininity and everything beyond is ever-evolving. (What else could explain the fact that the singer from Smash Mouth, at one point, actually got laid?) Indeed, we are not our parents, and they are not theirs. Thank fucking God!

Amidst all of this Butler talk, though, her concepts certainly aren’t limited high-falutin,’ book-learnin,’ Ivory-tower types. It’s something most people learned on the playground, every Halloween and every night out. Performance is something every man understands — or should understand — whether they’re about Boston Pizza and UFC or sporting women’s clothes.

Simply put, Man Up!, and publications of its ilk, fail; that’s not because they don’t capture a particular iteration of masculinity — hey, some dudes might want to be Man Up!’s man — but because they attempt to turn manhood into a code. Listen, gender performance isn’t akin to operating a toaster oven — there’s no definitive guide. (Unless your answer is the Bible. If so, carry on.)

Sure, this isn’t offensive like, say, The Game, Neil Strauss’s how-to guide to banging women. But it fails on the exact same grounds: Both attempt to turn complex social interactions into neat bullet lists.

Indeed, this might be about masculine performance, but that’s not a simple task — there are plenty of ways to do it and no single correct path. (And in GQ’s defense, it seems to understand that better than most men’s magazines.) Instead, Man Up! will produce legions of men desperately trying to be something they’re not — and can you think of a better definition for douchebag?